


Hellfire

by ishafel



Category: Rescue Me
Genre: Gen, PTSD, Yuletide 2007, mention of incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 16:01:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1175016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are things even Tommy won't do. (Sequel, sort of, to Hotter than Hell)  Yuletide 2007</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hellfire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fuschia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuschia/gifts).



There are things you don't do, even if you're Tommy Gavin. Things that, if you do them, you pretend you didn't, you pretend you were drunk, high, someone else, you bury the memories and salt the earth.

Catholics are good at guilt. Gavins are good at self-destruction.

Tommy's dad has been dead for three weeks the night he breaks his first rule, which is, don't fuck other men. He's been dead for six the day Tommy almost breaks the second. Which is, don't fuck family. 

As much as he loves Colleen, and he does love her, she makes him crazy. Just being in the same room with her makes him crazy, makes him do things and say things he doesn't mean.

This is one of them.

She's late, and she's drunk, or maybe high, and she's got on what's seriously the shortest skirt he's ever seen on a woman, and ordinarily Tommy wouldn't complain, but this is his little girl. He changed her diapers until she was two, and he doesn't need to see her ass now that she's nineteen.

It goes wrong pretty quickly after he says that.

He's fighting with her, about what she's doing to her body, to her life. About the fact that she's too damn smart to be making all of his mistakes and all of her mother's. The Gavin legacy: alcoholism and recklessness and that fucking Irish temper, three things he never wanted for his kids to inherit.

He wants somebody to get out alive. He wants to have saved someone.

He grabs her arm, which is a mistake; usually he doesn't touch her. Hasn't touched her, not really, not since Connor died and he realized his world had burned down around him. But he's furious, and terrified, thinking about Mags, Rosemary, Janet, Sheila, all the damage that the men in his family have done to the women. Because even worse than the possibility that Colleen might turn out like her father is the thought that she might turn out like her Aunt Maggie.

So he grabs her, and she turns on him, hammering his chest with her fists like a child. He gets hold of her wrists and pins her against the back of the couch, and he's standing looking down at her wondering what to do next, and she says, “Fuck me. Come on, Dad, you know you want to. You know I need you to.”

And even though he could swear it's never occurred to him before, even though the idea of it should disgust him, he wants to. The body pressing against his is a woman's, not a child's, and she's wearing so little clothing that he can feel every detail of it.

She's his daughter. He's never not given her something she asked for. This is like handing her a book of matches and watching her set herself on fire. He doesn't know which choice will destroy her, whether doing it or walking away is the worse choice.

He kisses her, but he doesn't put any passion into it. She's his daughter, and she's wearing strawberry flavored lip gloss, and she starts to cry while his mouth is still on hers.

He lets go of her wrists and puts his arms around her, and she leans against him and sobs into his chest. She feels so small against him, more delicate than Janet, more heartbroken than Janet ever was. Everything he's done, every wrong choice he's ever made, has played a part in bringing her here, in this moment. She's his daughter, his little girl, and he loves her.

“Colleen,” he says, and kisses the top of her head, and holds her, helpless, while she cries. He never wanted kids, not once he started fighting fires. Not once he saw what losing a child does to a person. But he never realized until now that having your kid die isn't the worst thing that could happen to you.

Watching your kid self-destruct is worse.

Eventually he carries her over to the couch and sits down with her on his lap. She's shivering, exhausted, pathetic: her makeup obliterated, her nose running, her hair tangled. He remembers when she was six, and broke her wrist; he remembers when she was twelve and a boy broke her heart for the first time. He remembers her propositioning him, and he knows he will remember it forever.

“Col,” he says, and now he's crying, too. “Christ, Col, I'm sorry.” Because there's no way he can make this better, and he doesn't even no where to start. If he could change everything, if he could make it so none of this happened: not only the past half hour, but all of it, Johnny and Connor and Jimmy, all the sons who died before their fathers: if he could do that for her, for them, he would.

If he could save her, if he could make her someone else's daughter, he would do it, even if it killed him.

He tells her, and she says, “Daddy. I know that.” And he thinks that maybe that means something. Maybe the fact that she trusted him enough to come to him means something. And he's grateful that he didn't kiss like he wanted her, that of all the things he's done, he hasn't done that. And if he wanted to, what's one more thing to hate himself for?

He saves the ones that can be saved, because that's his job. He buries the rest, and he tries not to feel guilty about his failures because in his line of work guilt gets people killed. If he can save Colleen, it won't changed the fact that he failed Connor, and it won't change the fact that he feels guilty about it. 

It might be enough to keep Tommy alive.

So he pushes Colleen's hair back from her face, and he says, “Baby. We'll make this okay. I promise.” And when she smiles at him, sort of, he feels like the biggest liar ever born.


End file.
